term like "carpenter" is that we immediately think of a highly skilled worker, and, at least in north america, in the middle class, making a very high income. as soon as we take that into the ancient world, we are totally lost, because, first of all, there was no middle class in the ancient world. there were the "haves" and the "have nots," to put it very simply. and in the anthropology of peasant societies, to say that somebody is an artisan or a carpenter is not to compliment them. it is to say that they are lower in the pecking order than a peasant farmer. >> narrator: very few scholars now believe that jesus was of such lowly birth. >> i'm not entirely convinced that we could characterize jesus as... as a peasant. i think that that probably miscasts jesus, especially in view of the more recent discoveries at sepphoris and elsewhere. >> he must be someone in the artisan class if he's working in the building industry. and in all probability, that would mean where he might grow up and live in nazareth, he likely went to sepphoris to earn his living. and this puts him in the interesting mix o